"We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive." — C.S. Lewis

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Sixteen years. That’s how long it’s been since the worst terrorist attack in American history. A total of 2,996 people dead or never accounted for. Symbols of American power struck without warning: both World Trade center towers and the Pentagon. The actions of informed passengers on a fourth plane likely averted a strike on the White House or Congress.

An entire generation had horrifying visions of previously unimaginable events happening in their own nation, with memories firmly etched into their minds.

They say time heals all wounds. And for the families of those lost that day I hope there is some measure of truth in it. But there is a flip side: such events fade in the public consciousness, such that they no longer inform or shape how the nation acts. To quote the opening of the movie “The Fellowship of the Ring,”

“…some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend, legend became myth…” (click “continue reading” below to continue)

I’ve been seeing this image pop up here and there across the Internet. It’s by the same painter who did one of Obama a few years back in response to the passage of Obamacare. The two form something of a bookend set.

I think the original Obama painting was spot on, depicting as it did an aloof and arrogant president trampling the Constitution while all his predecessors (except a few to Obama’s right, or the “left” side of the crowd) looked on with expressions of “what the hell, man?” The message of the original painting was clear.

As for the one above, I can appreciate that it’s not Trump who is center stage. We don’t need blind hero worship or the man-on-the-white-horse syndrome here. Trump’s depicted standing on a snake, which may be more Biblical allegory than I’m willing to extend to him. That said, D.C. Mordor is definitely snake-infested in our day, and much of the hissing against Trump comes from that serpentine choir. But the center of the action is a young family watering a plant (perhaps the Tree of Liberty?) in what is very parched soil. The message could well be interpreted as Trump trying to buy time for the next generation to refresh our nation. Changing who’s in office won’t matter until the culture itself has been changed. Politics, it is said, flows downstream from culture.

I’m sure in this era of professional grievance-mongering, others will count faces and point out there are only a few non-white characters in the crowd. But look who they are: Sheriff David Clarke, an outspoken patriot; an unnamed World War II veteran in a wheelchair who clearly gave to his country; an unnamed black lady and a minority man holding folded U.S. flags, signifying loss of loved ones in service to the nation.

The fault lines in this country today are not so much Republican-Democrat than they are traditionalist/progressive. As the many “RINO” Republicans demonstrate, the parties don’t cleanly align with the other dichotomy (Sheriff Clarke, by the way, is a registered Democrat). There are simply those who believe the “bourgeoisie” values that made this nation successful are worth preserving (perhaps “restoring” would be more accurate by this point), and the inaptly named “progressives” who would continue to tear down those values in a vague utopian quest that has ended in tragedy time and again throughout human history.

The takeaways?

Don’t expect Trump to solve every problem.

Those who love this land and the values that made it must be active in restoring them.

Teach your children well. One generation — the Boomers — left a huge wake of cultural destruction. This shows how a single generation can change a nation. Make sure those who are our heirs are prepared to change it again by valuing and defending their inheritance.

One final thought about watering the “tree of liberty” — the artist is optimistic in his portrayal. Thomas Jefferson warned that nourishing that fragile plant sometimes takes more than water (though his quote is often used without context). Hope/pray for the best; prepare for the worst.

“Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct, nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary. In no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any falsification had taken place.” – George Orwell, 1984

Whatever you may think about the appropriateness of removing statues of former Confederate figures, one thing is certain: it will notstopthere.

George Washington and Thomas Jefferson are complex characters, not simple cardboard cutout “racists.” In today’s climate, though, careful consideration of both virtues and vices is frowned upon. We are pressed to judge historical characters not by the context of their times, but by how they measure up to current political emotionss. And so we have reached Shakespeare’s observation through Mark Antony in Julius Caesar:

“The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.”

Caesar, rather than the wealthy, aristocratic Roman Senate, had populist support. (Sound familiar?) So was it out of patriotism or jealousy that the Senate acted? It’s a fair question to ask those today who see our current President as Caesar, and dream of removing him, violently if necessary.

Whether Caesar should have been killed by the Roman Senate can be debated, but one thing history makes clear: after that milestone and the civil war that followed, the Republic clearly was dead.

What we are watching today is the disavowal and erasure of the historical foundations of the American republic. It’s been a long process over the last half century, but those who want to see it done sense victory and are accelerating their efforts. They may need to be more careful what they wish for.

As we celebrate motherhood today, there is a significant trend worth noting. We often hear “think of the children” when an unpopular or unwise piece of legislation is being proposed. And yet, few of our leaders have “skin in the game” when it comes to their nation’s future:

Emmanuel Macron founded a new party, and his election as France’s president is said to herald the “revival of Europe.” Interestingly, Macron has no children.

This is not that notable in itself. After all, George Washington had no biological children. But across the continent Macron wants to bind closer together, there’s a stark pattern:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel also has no children. British prime minister Theresa May has no children. Italian prime minister Paolo Gentiloni has no children. Holland’s Mark Rutte has no children. Sweden’s Stefan Loumlfven has no biological children. Luxembourg’s Xavier Bettel has no children. Scotland’s Nicola Sturgeon has no children. Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, has no children.

This is too remarkable to ignore. While Macron is young—39 years old—the rest of Europe is being governed by childless Baby Boomers…

It’s clear which side has political power now. But the demographics point to a different future. In 2009 Phillip Longman noted that in France (for example) a tiny minority of women are giving birth to over 50% of the children every year. These women are either practicing Catholics or immigrant Muslims.

Contemporary childless leaders, however ascendant they feel today, may be the last gasp of secularism. The future is won by those who show up, and only the religiously orthodox are having children.

Those still swimming in the ancient streams of Faith and Culture in France will have the observant offspring of two rival religions living within the borders of one nation. The second Battle of Tours, (or Vienna, or Lepanto) might be extra bloody due to the policies of today, but the authors of those policies will not be around because they will be dead, and their offspring will not be around, because they do not exist.

Surely Macron, Merkel, Juncker, and the rest would argue that they can do their crucial jobs better because they don’t have children to distract them. C.S. Lewis provides the rebuttal: “Children are not a distraction from more important work. They are the most important work.”

The elite have long been insulated from the effects of their piously pie-in-the-sky policies by doing such things as living in gated communities and sending their children to high-priced private schools. As this article points out, they have even less reason today to worry about the effects of their futile utopianism. This is probably a key reason why our leadership seems so out of touch with the people they allegedly lead, especially in the area of immigration. It won’t be their children suffering from the resurgence of long-controlled diseases like measles and whooping cough. It won’t be theirchildren who will either have to fight or conform to alien ideologies that were allowed in through millions of adherents’ migration. It won’t be their children who face falling wages due to competition from cheaper labor overseas and immigrant labor at home. They can afford to wear utopian blinders in a way no parent can.

Turkey’s recent election, which further enhanced the Islamist totalitarian powers of Recep Erdogan, shows how far that nation has come from the secular society Kemal Ataturk intended.

The votes by Turks living abroad are even more telling, and should be noted:

About 1.4 million expatriate Turks voted in Turkey’s referendum to grant President Erdogan near-dictatorial powers, with three quarters of them residing in Austria, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France. These Turkish voters, living in some of Europe’s most liberal countries, overwhelming cast their ballots for Erdogan’s illiberal reforms of Turkish society…

Life in liberal Europe is not having the impact people hoped—Turks in Europe are not any less nationalistic, less authoritarian or less Islamist than their compatriots at home—rather they are more of all these things..

If assimilation is failing with long established Turks in affluent, full employment Germany, what can we expect with other communities in less prosperous European countries?

The measure squeaked by at home, with just over 51% saying “yes.” For the Turks living abroad, “Yes” had anywhere from 15 to 25% more support! That would tend to confirm the thesis that the massive wave of ‘refugees’ in the past couple of years represents an ideological vanguard of Islamism that intends to make Europe submit to it, not the other way around.

The author of the quoted piece seems puzzled that good economic conditions in Germany haven’t produced assimilation. That’s because assimilation is a primarily a cultural issue, not an economic one. In the past, Western European nations and the Anglosphere (U.K., U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc) fully expected newcomers to adopt their language, follow their laws, and to give their undivided loyalty to their new nation.

Immigrants today don’t have to cut the cord with the “old country” the way past generations did. With global communication, the ability to travel and the tendency to settle into specific ethnic enclaves in their new land, immigrants today have far less motivation to assimilate. Let’s face it: for Mexicans in the U.S., “home” is next door, you live in barrios with people like yourself, you can watch Spanish-language TV such as Univision, and even wave the Mexican flag while watching the U.S. play that country in soccer. These are not Mexican-Americans. They are Mexicans living in America. The same is true of the Turks in Europe. Even at the height of the Cold War, with Turkey a key partner in NATO, Europeans were strongly divided over whether or not to consider Turkey “European.” Its current regression to pining for the days of the Ottoman Empire should answer that question.

The West has basically allowed a substantial fifth column to develop in their midst — a development our traitorous leadership class has encouraged. While the resulting attacks rarely amount to more than a single actor at a time right now, I suspect that won’t remain the case much longer. Even the “lone wolves” usually have ideological and communication ties with the Islamist movement. At this stage of the game, Turks should be carefully watched, not welcomed in with no restrictions. It’s time to shut the doors for a while and deal with what we’ve already admitted, rather than keep the welcome mat out for anyone with a pulse.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, this article is very much worth your attention:

I have long observed that an alarming swath of public evangelicals seems to be driven by a consuming desire to be liked by the world. ((note: link added to excerpt by me))

Now, that is my characterization, not theirs. To their minds, they are trying to be good representatives of Jesus. They are focusing on “kingdom” issues. They eschew evangelicalism’s past mistakes of tying itself to various moralistic fads such as outlawing alcohol or opposing nylons and lipstick. They want to be sure that unbelievers know that they love them, that the GOP is not the Kingdom of God. They want to be seen as scholarly, cautious, nuanced, careful, measured, and helpful. They shrink from the thought of being seen as dogmatic, triumphalistic, or narrow.

Are those bad motivations? As stated and as far as they go, most of them are not.

However, I’ve come to fear that they mask fatal flaws. For starters, these sorts are willing to let their motivations be judged and dictated by the reactions of unbelievers…

Note: this is a lengthy post in part because I’m refuting secularists who misuse scripture to justify the ongoing invasion of the West. If you arrived on this site’s main page be sure to click on “Continue reading” below.

Both a judge in Washington and an appeals panel of the 9th Circus Circuit Court of Appeals have stayed President Trump’s executive order banning entry to the country by people from seven nations considered to be high risk (incidentally, it was Obama who first flagged these nations as problematic). Both courts claimed there was no evidence to support such a ban.

Truth is, they just didn’t look for any. After all, pesky facts would get in the way of their legislating AND presiding from the bench:

A review of information compiled by a Senate committee in 2016 reveals that 72 individuals from the seven countries covered in President Trump’s vetting executive order have been convicted in terror cases since the 9/11 attacks. These facts stand in stark contrast to the assertions by the Ninth Circuit judges who have blocked the president’s order on the basis that there is no evidence showing a risk to the United States in allowing aliens from these seven terror-associated countries to come in.

Let me repeat that: 72 people from the countries on Trump’s list arrived in the United States since 9/11, and were later convicted of terror-related actions.

This is why I can’t stand the Transportation Security Agency — it’s security theater, not real security. Real security comes from keeping terrorists out of the country, not from harassing citizens at airports.

This is why I can’t stand the open borders crowd. Either we are a sovereign nation or we’re not. Sovereign nations have every right to control who is allowed to enter and under what circumstances.